Certification news

It’s Official: We’re Now Certified to Repair Your Rivian

Oxnard & Ventura, California · 3 minute read

We’re proud to announce that we’re finally Rivian certified.

If you drive one around Oxnard or Ventura, you may already know us. We have been repairing these vehicles here for a while. What changed is that the manufacturer has now put it in writing, and that piece of paper does more for you than it does for us.

Here is why.

The parts problem nobody mentions until it’s your car

Some of the components in your vehicle are not sold to just anybody. Structural pieces, safety systems, the hardware around the battery pack. Those go to shops inside the certified network and nowhere else.

That is what catches people out. A shop can take your car in, write the estimate, start the teardown, and only then find out it cannot buy half the list. Your car sits in a bay. You sit in a rental.

We can order all of it. That is the short version of why our Rivian certified body shop status matters to you.

What we had to put in place

• Factory training on the truck and the SUV specifically, working from the manufacturer’s own published procedures rather than a general electric vehicle approach
• Factory diagnostic tools, so we can read the car properly and confirm every system before it goes back to you
• Structural measuring equipment that checks the body against factory specification instead of against a good eye
• Calibration equipment for the cameras, radar and sensors behind the driver assistance features
• Direct access to genuine factory parts

Aluminum is fussy, and that is a building problem

These vehicles use a lot of aluminum. If steel dust settles on aluminum during a repair, it starts corroding. You will not see it happen. The repair passes every inspection anyone can give it, then shows up as paint failure and weakness years down the line.

Our aluminum room is fully enclosed and runs under positive pressure, so clean air pushes outward and shop dust cannot drift in. It has its own tools and its own extraction, shared with nothing. Plenty of shops hang a plastic curtain in a regular bay and call it the same thing. It is not the same thing.

The cameras have to be told where they are

Your driver assistance features only work if the cameras and sensors sit exactly where the factory put them, pointed exactly where the factory pointed them. Replace a windshield, repair a bumper, change the alignment, and that moves.

The catch is that your car will not complain about it. No warning light. It will go do its job on the 101 with a slightly wrong picture of the road.

We recalibrate to factory specification and document it before you get your keys back.

Everything happens here

• Glass replacement in house, including the camera recalibration a new windshield triggers
• Alignment and tires, plus a full mechanic on site
• We handle the insurance claim directly with your carrier so you are not relaying messages between two companies
• Out of the area? We will come get it

Where this fits

Rivian now joins Tesla, Lucid, Cadillac, Honda, Acura, Subaru, Ford, General Motors, FCA, Kia and Hyundai on our certification list, alongside I-CAR Gold Class and Platinum and Best Collision Repair Shop in Ventura County from the VC Reporter.

Ask around. Ask your friends, ask your neighbor, ask your mechanic. Then bring it to us and we will put it back the way it was built.